What Would Jane Austen Do?

Great series at The Onion: critics talk about the best non-2010 movies/music/books they discovered in 2010. Part one: music Part two: etc .

photo via Nicolas Genin The King's Speech is every bit as wonderful as you were hoping it would be.  Colin Firth, OMG.  (Is that an order of knighthood?  It should be.)  I know the movie isn't playing everywhere, but if I were even within two hours of a theater (MOM) I would rush to see it. FYI: It was showing on two screens at the theater I went to, and all showings were selling out. I think it's going to break records for per-screen average revenues.

via Why yes, I am watching Santa Buddies ; why do you ask? I think the gold medal for Worst Christmas Movie of All Time goes without debate to Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer .  All persons involved with that movie should be set loose in the forest and hunted down as animals by a party of angry parents.  Santa Buddies earned its spot on the list, too.  [Papi tried to convince Becca that the real name of the movie is Santa CLAWS and at the end the dogs kill and eat all the people.  Yeah, I don't know why our kids are so weird.] And that's without mentioning anything from the Hallmark Channel or Lifetime (which Papi should also be allowed to rewrite).

'Tis the season for Best-of-2010 lists. Here's Urban Dictionary's (NSFW, for those of you still at work this week). No doubt gate rape earned the top spot, but double rainbow will always have a place in my heart.

picture via I Heart Guts Becca had surgery on Friday to correct reflux in her ureters.  The reflux had been responsible for multiple UTIs and kidney damage (she's down to 25% function in one kidney). We've known about the problem since late in the summer, and we knew the surgery was coming up, so it wasn't an emergency or anything. The surgery involved cutting through her bladder, detaching her ureters and reattaching them at a better angle. Oy . Anyway, the kid is doing better now.  We were able to come home Saturday afternoon, and the wound dressing came off today.  She's hurting a little, but she'll be okay. My mom took this picture right after we were put in a room on Friday following surgery.  Becca is holding on to the remote so no one can change the channel while she naps.  About two minutes after the photo was taken, she woke up and said, "I want to change into a cuter nightgown."  She has been absolutely showered with "get-well" pr...

Watching I recorded this a while back, but it's still airing through December.  Love me some Fran Lebowitz. You might also like to know that Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking is coming to HBO this month, too.  These were perhaps not the most obvious choices for HBO to fill the void left by Kenny F. Powers, but I'm happy. Listening to Target has 14 Christmas songs available for (free) download on their site , in case you were looking for some new Yuletide jams.  Amazon is also releasing one free Christmas MP3 per day all month long .  My favorite so far is Fleet Foxes'.

I thought I posted about this last year, but evidently not.  American Science & Surplus (yes, A.S.S. har ) has all kinds of cool stuff.  I love getting Christmas presents for the kids from them.  Last year Santa brought E&B a laser pointer, a pocket microscope, and shrinky dink film.  This year in the sleigh (so far) are a 3D drawing pad (complete with glasses), a can crusher, a 10' long sheet of adhesive dry erase board, a bag of rocks for experiments, and a simple telescope.  They also have marshmallow guns, potato guns, robot parts, hexabugs, gyroscopes, and all manner of tubes, bearings, wiring and gas masks.  And French riot helmets!  Hydraulic cylinders!  Solar-powered flashlights!  So much fun stuff you'll have a hard time choosing. Not a paid review or anything; just passing along the info.

Bethle-may-hem , originally uploaded by houston mamacita . Dateline: Bethlehem. All hell broke loose when the manger was attacked by kamikaze paper airplanes...

Mer sent me a link to this handy list of tv holiday specials .  Thanks, Mer! P.S.: Apropos of Babble's obsession with Angelina Jolie -- a fascination I do not understand -- I am watching a trailer/interview ad for The Tourist right now, with A.J. and Johnny Depp.  I'd love to see the movie for the scenery, but I don't think I could take Johnny Depp's Let's-Pretend-I'm-Not-From-Kentucky accent for very long.  Also, he just described A.J. as "a walking poem," and then immediately described Venice as "poetry at every turn."  Gag me with a chainsaw.

Oh, haaaaay .  Did you know I had a blog?  Because I kinda forgot. Watching  I liked this much more than I thought I would.  It's a good thing to watch (late) on Sunday nights to keep the existential doom at bay.  Can't decide if I like Jason Schwartzman in it, but Zach Galifanakis is funny in a subdued way, and Ted Danson , y'all!  Watching I'm not proud.  Pretty much what you'd expect: superlative bimbos. My favorite is Josie Stevens.  I have no idea who her husband, Steve Stevens, is, but Josie has "worked on Cinemax film projects ."   photo via E!Online   Reading Decorno posted three times yesterday.  Shhh!  Don't startle her or she might not post any more.  But doesn't she look nice in this outfit?   ADR photo by Juergen Teller/ W Magazine

photo: Wikipedia Firefox/Chrome nerdiness ahead: The Camelizer is my new favorite Firefox extension.*  You can use it to track price changes in items at Amazon.  Let's say, for example, that you are interested in purchasing one Rapunzel Fairytale Tower .  You need it in time for Christmas, but you still have a little time to wait for the best price.  With CamelCamelCamel** you can 1) see the price history of the item, and 2) sign up to receive an email notice when the price drops by a certain amount or percent (you set the parameters).   You could also use it for mundane things like diapers: take advantage of sales by pouncing when the price drops below a certain level.  Cool, huh?    An even cooler feature with CamelCamelCamel is that you can import your entire Amazon wish list to the site and track price changes for all of the items on it.  The people behind CamelCamelCamel also have extensions that work for Back Country , ...

The internet was all excited about some .gif with Natalie Portman's butt today.  [Least exciting butt EVER.]  Anyway, it's in the new Danny McBride movie!  This is going to be awesome.  And awesomely NSFW.

My friend Cayce just found this, and it is genius: an online sign-up sheet .  Click on that bad boy to see it in its full glory.  Never again have five versions of Taco Soup at your soup swap!  Never again chase down parents to paint faces at the fall festival!  And I think my favorite part is that you don't have to log-in or even register in order to use it.   Yo, it's a free service; nobody's getting paid to pimp it.

My grandmother passed away last Thursday.  She hadn't been well, and I'm glad she's not suffering any more.  Of course, I still miss her very much.  She was a great lady . The funeral was yesterday afternoon, and all weekend long people brought food over to my parents' house.  My Lord how we ate.  Ham, potato salad, fried chicken, heros, ham, rolls, cole slaw, pork roast, ham, gumbo, smoked chicken (OMG so good), meatballs, ham, chili, pasta, dirty rice (the best I've ever had) ... not to mention chocolate cake, brownies, molasses cookies, tea cakes, hummingbird cake, pumpkin spice cake...  If grief can be cured with food, or even just ham, we are well on our way.

[Posted in response to Sarah , with apologies in advice: this turned out to be a damn dissertation.] Usually I'm put off by bloggers who post recipes saying, "OMG this thing I made was the best thing EVER!"  So I won't claim that this chili was spectacular, but I can tell you that I tried a new method this year and was pretty encouraged by the results. I had always used ground beef for chili, because that's what my mom used, because that's really the easiest thing.  But lately I've converted to the Church of Chunked Beef, and I'm not looking back.  I also added a secret ingredient this year, which will be revealed below. Since you didn't ask: I am unfamiliar with the use of any kind of produce in the making of chili.  Fresh onions, tomatoes, etc. have no place here.  And I will not even discuss beans.  If you want to move to Russia and pledge allegiance to Stalin, that's your business. So yeah, the recipe: 2 lbs. pot roast (i.e. chuck ro...

My parents' Halloween costumes.  You should know that 1) my dad is an engineer, and 2) my mom has never worn nail polish, ever, in her entire life.

Happy birthday, Nonnie!

I'm home with a sore throat.  Yesterday I watched Gangs of New York .  I've wanted to see it since at least a year before it came out; the history of New York is one of my little mental hobbies.  But, yeah, GORY.  I only saw about half of it; the other half I watched from behind my hands.  Not ideal sick-day viewing.  [Still, holy cow, Daniel Day-Lewis is something else, isn't he?] via Today I was looking for an old black-and-white comedy, possibly with William Powell.  Ta-da: My Man Godfrey .  Now that's more like it. public domain

via Our buddy Mir tells us that all orders at Piperlime today earn a $25 gift certificate, in honor of Piperlime's anniversary.  Oh, and use the promo code TREAT4U for an extra 10% off.

Pinata Fail :-( , originally uploaded by houston mamacita . I tried to move the pumpkin pinata and the whole outer layer came off in a sheet.